As you may have heard, our current building at 1143 Gallatin is slated for demolition. We have been scouring the neighborhood looking for a new home for the Darkroom, and we are happy to announce that we have finally found one!

We will be relocating to 625 Hart Lane in East Nashville.

The space is flexible and spacious, and we are excited about the opportunities it will bring us.

We’ll be having a huge party on June 10 to fund our move. (check out the flyer) We will be open at 2pm through the Art Stumble ending at 10pm. The day will kick off with a print sale and photo equipment sale. We’ll be unloading tons of extra photo and darkroom gear, and there will be some limited edition black and white prints and other photographic work for sale at awesome prices. We’ll also have Mike’s Ice Cream and drinks by donation. If you have equipment to donate to the sale, or if you have photo prints you would like to contribute to the gallery sale, we would LOVE to have them. Donations need to be submitted before June 7 and should be matted or otherwise ready to hang. Equipment should be working and clean. Please contact us by email if you would like to make a contribution. The more we raise, the better our darkroom can be!

We will vacate our current space effective June 20th. There will be a short gap during which you will not be able to work in the darkroom. We hope to keep this to a period of about 2-3 weeks. We’re committed to doing our very best to be up and running as soon as possible, and will keep everyone updated on the process.

We have a lot to move, and we can’t pack your stuff! If you have gear, chemicals, paper, etc. stored at NCD you will need to pick it up no later than June 7th. Anything left after that date could get sold at our sale If there is a reason you will be unable to retrieve your gear, please contact us by email to make arrangements.

Want to help? Come to the fundraiser on June 10 and buy some stuff! Or have some drinks and ice cream and make a donation. Invite your friends, relatives, and neighbors. The more the merrier.

Want to help more? Make some prints in the darkroom and donate them to the sale! Please contact us by email for details.

Want to help even more? There will be several work days as we pack up the current space and build out the new space. We will announce the work days on Facebook and by email. PLEASE come out and put some sweat into your new darkroom. It’s gonna be awesome.

If you have questions, concerns, or feedback please get in touch. We always love to hear from you.

Best,

NCD

May 27, 2017

Nashville Community Darkroom: Deadline Today is Nashville’s newest, most exciting (and only) pop up photography scramble, debuting Saturday, April 9th as a part of the East Side Art Stumble. In a fast-paced, all-day competition photographers will be tasked with shooting, processing, printing and displaying their photographic interpretation of a common theme – to be revealed that morning.

March 31, 2016

The Rescued Film Project, headed by Levi Bettwieser, is an archive of images recovered from found, undeveloped film from all over the world. The project recently put together a video highlighting one of its biggest recent finds: 31 undeveloped rolls of film shot by a single soldier during World War II. Thanks to PetaPixel for the heads up.

December 3, 2015

It’s that time of year again! Time for way-too-early Christmas decorations, fights about coffee cups and manger scenes, and the dreaded highly anticipated onslaught advent of holiday music on radio stations across the land!

To ring in the season, the Nashville Community Darkroom is offering a great deal on holiday portraits — $65 gets you a 30-minute session and 5 digital images for you to do whatever you want with! Make them into holiday cards! Post them on facebook! Send them out in your family’s annual newsletter! Wait, do people still do that?

As a huge bonus, every single dollar goes to support your 501(c)(3) nonprofit Nashville Community Darkroom. This is our big annual fundraiser, so come on out, get some portraits and help us ring in 2016!

November 12, 2015

Opening June 19th with a reception, the NCD is excited to announce it’s next show: Pinholes and Polaroids!

Comprised of two distinct bodies of work, this exciting show at the Nashville Community Darkroom spotlights the beautiful imagery resulting from two very different methods of photographic reproduction.

On view—for the first time in Nashville—is the work of the award-winning fine art photographer Polly Chandler. Polly’s imagery is beautiful, meticulous and conceptual, shot with a large-format camera using Polaroid Type 55 4×5 inch film, which she develops herself while on location.

Also on view are pinhole images created by the Nashville community and Inglewood Girl Scout Troop 884. All were made and developed at the NCD on Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day—4/26/15. Come see photos made with oatmeal canisters, paint cans, homemade boxes, cookie tins and old suitcases.

August 25, 2014

The Nashville Community Darkroom recently completed another school collaboration, this time with fourth grade art students at Lockeland Elementary Design Center in East Nashville. NCD volunteers visited Camilla Spadafino’s art classroom as resident artists and helped the students elevate the “selfie” to fine art, shooting their own self-portraits in our mobile studio, and then printing them as cyanotypes using Sun Print paper. Continue Reading →

April 3, 2014

We’re well on our way, and excited to start having folks in for tours soon! Below you’ll find a collection of shots that show us slowly transforming what used to be a check cashing place at 1143 Gallatin Rd. into what will shortly be the Nashville Community Darkroom. Plus, there’s one mockup of what we hope our signage is going to look like.

January 21, 2014

The “D” in NCD may have another month to go, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been hard at work building relationships with our community. That said, the Nashville Community Darkroom is proud to announce that we’ve begun our first community initiative, working with teacher Elijah Ammen and students at Stratford STEM Magnet High School to teach the physics of photography and the chemistry of the darkroom. With our expertise and passion, we’re aiming to help the students start a vibrant and productive Photography Club. We’ve already seen the number of interested students double from week 1 to week 2, and we’ve also seen a few pretty good shots from these budding artists.